The Provisional Government was a group of former Duma deputies who were assembled following the abdication of Nicholas II on the 2nd of March 1917. They were only meant to rule for the short term until a constitution could be created and a real government could be legitimately elected. They faced many problems including that they did not expect the tsarist regime to fall apart so quickly and everyone was a little reluctant to rule and, at the same time, there was also another group claiming to rule – the Petrograd Soviet.
The Provisional Government were no like the Tsars. When they began to rule, they came with a clear liberal agenda. Although this may sound good, at the time it was not particularly favourable. In 1917, Russia was still involved in the First World War, as was much of the world, and as such liberal ideas and freedom was having to take a back seat to the war effort. Therefore, many of the onlookers were very doubtful about how effective the PG could be.
What did they actually do?
After March 1917, the PG introduced some more reforms far more wholeheartedly than Nicholas II did, however at the time Russia was incredibly unstable, and so introducing things like freedom of press and political activity, and then ending the policing of politics was really just opening a can of worms. It led to the increasingly vocal opposition to the Provisional Government from all directions; the Communists thought they were not doing enough, the right wing extremists hated the liberal reforms, and there were also independently military groups trying to regain some control too. Because of the opposition from all areas, the Provisional Government ended up somewhat bending to everyone’s will, trying to satisfy the masses just so that they would be able to maintain some power long enough to actually do something worthwhile. For example, at the time there was an issue with the peasants lands being seized by others and the government neither recognised it was an issue, nor made any attempts to prevent it, which left the countryside in a state of uncertainty.
They also faced the issue of the fact that Russia is just too big. While the revolution had spread from city to city and the people there knew the Tsar had been overthrown, the people in more isolated areas were always several weeks behind on the news, which was a serious delay especially considering all the changes that occurred within just one year. Whole areas were not just difficult for the government to rule, but they had drifted out of control entirely – there was no true centralised power.
The Provisional Government stumbled on with limited effectiveness until the October Revolution, in which Lenin seized control and declared the opening of a new government.